Dance Marathon President Works Hard Through COSAM

Auburn University junior Jack Schwartz has recently been nominated as president of one of the university’s largest fundraisers of the year – Auburn University Dance Marathon.

The event is a benefit for Children’s Hospital at Midtown Medical Center of Columbus Regional Health, and raised more than half a million dollars during its most recent event.

“I didn’t really know anything about it coming in freshman year, but I went to the main event and loved it and fell in love with the program,” said Jack, who originally joined the Dance Marathon Morale Committee. “Morale has my heart, but there are some things that I wanted to see come out of the organization, changes that I thought would make it better that I can only do in a leadership position.”

Changes to the next main event under Jack’s leadership, which will take place in February 2020, include moving the Dance Marathon to the Student Act.

“A lot of the bigger dance marathons, they have their main event in one big room at like an arena or something like that,” Jack said. “But ours was previously at the Student Center and people are allowed to wander wherever they want so it’s hard to concentrate people in one spot. Now it’s going to be in one big room with a huge stage and it will be better to concentrate the students in one place. I’m super excited about it.”

Jack, who is originally from Michigan and moved to Mississippi for high school, is double-majoring in Microbiology and Neuroscience with a minor in Political Science. He decided to attend Auburn after visiting for football games.

“I came here for an Ole Miss game and then came for a Mississippi State game,” he said. “I loved it. I actually got lost with some friends while we were visiting and people were just so nice and helpful. I started looking into it because I didn’t want to go to Mississippi State or Ole Miss.”

Jack originally began to purse a degree towards medicine, but later changed his decision.

“I guess I didn’t have a passion for it, it was just the reasonable decision because I was good at science,” he said. “Within this last year, it switched from medical school to law school. I really like politics, that’s kind of my side hobby. I was looking at different things and came upon International Law, like treaties and war time law, and that was super interesting to me. So I talked to the pre-law advisor and got some information on it so I think that’s the goal right now. I’ve been taking practice tests for the LSAT and they’ve been going pretty well. I’m taking the LSAT in September, so I’m hoping for the best.”

COSAM student and Auburn University Dance Marathon President Jack Schwartz.